This disclosure relates to reducing power supply noise and/or jitter in an integrated circuit device by drawing additional current to increase the total current frequency above a resonant frequency range of the power supply network or the integrated circuit device.
This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of the present disclosure, which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present disclosure. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
Modern electronic devices, such as computers, portable phones, digital cameras, and televisions, often use integrated circuits to process and transmit data. Processing and transmitting data uses power, which may be provided to the components of an integrated circuit by a power distribution network inside the integrated circuit. Different components draw different amounts and frequencies of current from the power distribution network. Some components, such as a transmitter, may draw significant amounts of current from the power distribution network to transmit a data signal, specifically drawing a current each time the polarity of the data signal switches from low to high or from high to low. When this occurs, power supply noise from the power distribution network could cause “jitter” in the data signal. Too much jitter may cause the data signal to become unintelligible. As modern electronic devices continue to use higher data transfer rates, jitter may have an increasingly outsized effect on the transmitted data signals.
Integrated circuit designs have accounted for jitter by adding capacitance to the power distribution network of the integrated circuit. The power supply noise that causes jitter may be reduced by increasing the amount of on-die decoupling capacitance in the power distribution network and/or by adding capacitance to the package on which the integrated circuit is installed. Adding additional capacitance, however, takes up valuable die space and that could otherwise contain more productive circuitry. With increasing data rates, however, obtaining a satisfactory data signal may involve adding increasingly large amounts of on-die capacitance.